Name Change

DeBloga is dead. Sorry Adam.

The new name for this blog will be Future Unwritten. I got the name from the liner notes of The Clash's 1982 album "Combat Rock." The graphic in this posting is the only image I could find of it on the web through Google image search, and unfortunately it's small and you can't really make out the writing if you don't know what it is. On the left side of the page in the book is the phrase "The Future Is Unwritten." Underneath it is a banner furling over the bottom two corners of the star which reads "Know Your Rights," which is the name of the first song on the album.

The name has absolutely nothing to do with that damn song that keeps getting played to death on pop/adult top 40 radio.

In the interest of full disclosure: I'm a huge Clash fan. "London Calling" is one of my favorite albums of all time. If you look back at this post, I took the title from the Clash song of the same name on the "Combat Rock" album. While I'm at it, I might as well plug "Westway to the World," an excellent documentary about the Clash that came out a few years ago.

What does it mean to me and why name the blog after it? To sum it up in a word, it means possibilities. That word also happens to adequately and concisely summarize the next two years of my life as a grad student at USC.

As a journalist, it also means to me that my and our collective responsibility as a profession is never done, that we have to continuously documenting what is happening in the world.

As a history major in my undergraduate years, it also means that you have to continuously look at and reevaluate the past to better understand your present and future, either to uncover things which were missed previously or to provide a greater understanding of the present situation by understanding the context and cause and effect of how you got to where you are at this present moment.

All of those things to me are what journalism and blogging should be about, and are embodied by that simple but memorable phrase from a 24-year old album by one of the greatest and most influential punk rock bands of all time.

So update your bookmarks, the new place to go is http://future-unwritten.blogspot.com